1) We passed one of the cribs on to Laurence and Guillaume nine days ago, and had a lovely Saturday afternoon with them & their burgeoning foetus in the bargain. While Jean-Philippe pieced together the crib and I sorted the remaining baby clothes before they arrived for lunch, I felt the first wave of motherly regret of the weekend. Ouuu... there it is again...
Here they are, foetus in tow, scanning the Xmas market crowd for Caroline. And here, too, are Tomi & Jean-Philippe (who you don't see often in these pages, because he so very much detests having his picture taken. As you may have guessed from the look on his face...)
Here're the proud parents on the next day, and the crib their baby will be lying in just a few weeks from now ( ?! ). Whoa...
2) The Xmas market was in full swing on that Saturday afternoon, which almost resulted in our missing Caroline & Co. in the crowd. I've never seen the Christkindels Märik through this large a throng. And I've been through many's the Märik by now.
Speaking of which: the name. Christ Child? Who? Where? Not that this bothers me, but... it is rather strange. There you go, though: a Christ Child's Market without the child. I'm starting to think that this holiday should be renamed. I mean, everybody I know celebrates this holiday, most of them are non-believers and many of them weren't even brought up in the Christian tradition. Got any ideas?
While I'm waiting for your feedback on that one, here's a crowd of tourists awaiting the bridge's swinging back in La Petite France; and Tomi, trying to figure out WHAT is going on, here...
And here are the boys, meeting up with their buddies, Lara and Dylan; thanking Dylan for a movie his family gave them for their birthday; and all four of them watching Totoro do his tricks later that night. (An aside: Dylan was all into trying his hand at the guitar that night. And... I think I know what he's getting for Xmas...! Don't tell.)
And here's alot of the bunch of us at table, drinking various warm drinks from the local producers' section of the market (which, as I've mentioned before, is right next door to us, making us feel very lucky for one whole month)...
3) Here's a little look at a couple of the Xmas corners of the house...
4) Here's Tomi, who hasn't stopped drawing and cutting and pasting in the past few months, except to eat, drink, sleep or watch CAT! and DOG! MOVIES! In the second picture, he's showing me where HIS udder is.
5) Below is sick Leo, after having drawn me a dinosaur (based loosely upon a stegosaurus I'd just drawn for him and the Ed-Emberley-inspired cows we'd all drawn together at school earlier that day, before it became apparent that Leo had caught the bug, too). Poor babe.
6) Their dally was coming home late that evening (we were supposed to go out together, but it turned out that Audrey wasn't able to babysit, so Jean-Phi gave my ticket to a friend at work. In the end, though, we would have had to cancel, anyway, for fear of giving Audrey this weasel of a worm that's been going around) ...so we started our evening drawing with a DRAW! STORY! of two boys who go on a walk, looking for their dally, a corner of which you can see in the picture of the sleeping Leo. The cat doesn't know where to find him, nor the does the dog or the mouse, but when their walk takes them to their mommy, she is able to help them out. The boys like this way of telling stories - and so do I. It's fun, and it gives them more impetus to think of their own twists and turns for the story.
7) I keep meaning to mention four great guys and gals who I am very
( ! ) happy to be able to call my friends. Two of them are brothers, and the other two are brother and sister, and they all keep coming to mind of late, though they are far-far away.
First of all: Ruairi* and Nial, who were crucial to every gathering we ever had on Kelvinhaugh Street or in Cleopatra's or any of a squillion other venues in Glasgow, and who kept coming to mind as I went to concerts this past autumn. Two of the times in particular (at David Thomas and Yo La Tengo) were because I was wearing Doc Martins; and things started looking like a slam dance fest was in the making; and this reminded me of the Damned, which was the concert where Anne and I met the brothers, and where my Doc Martins turned into paper maché. You didn't think this could happen to Docs, did you?
Well, whether you do or not: Nial and Antonella (who he met at the end of the year I lived there) just had a... BABY! Wee, beautiful Brendan. I hope to meet him some day soon...
Which brings me to Emer, who put me on to Altan, which was among my happy recent cassette finds; and who also just had her second child, Una, last year. And! who wrote recently to tell me that Justin (whose Justin Music cassette I also just popped in so happily) and Melanie had just had their first child, Rory! More babies ( + Emer & Patrick's four-year-old ) I can't wait to meet!
Which (name) brings us full circle, dunnit? Except that I don't have any pictures of any of them scanned (digital didn't mean what it means today, way back when), and I haven't yet asked Nial if I can take any of his from the internet. So... stay tuned...
* Ruairi and one of my four flatmates, Maria (who is another fabulous person), have been together since sometime in the second semester of that year. She didn't make it into that paragraph because she wasn't at the concert, unfortunately.
